A Calgary dad is speaking out against a pro-life advertising campaign that exposed his young son to photos of a bloody fetus, leaving him in tears. Ryan Frodle was sorting through his mail on the weekend when his four-year-old son grabbed a postcard that contained the graphic images and the words “Politician Michelle Rempel supports abortion and she wants to be your MP.”

An atheist organization says billboards it planned to run in downtown Vancouver have been rejected by advertising agency Pattison Outdoor. The Centre for Inquiry Canada ad plays with a biblical reference by featuring the image of a woman with the words: “Jenn 13:1 Praying won’t help. Doing will.” It goes on to say: “Without God. We’re all good.”

Conservatives took on hot button social issues — and labour unions — as delegates to the federal Tory party convention looked to move beyond the Senate scandal that has preoccupied the Harper government.

The University of Calgary should sit up and take note. Provincial court Judge Allan Fradsham’s ruling that anti-abortion demonstrators had every right to display posters and hand out leaflets at Calgary International Airport puts to shame the U of C’s perennial behaviour towards anti-abortion displays on campus.

A lawyer for eight members of the Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform said a judge’s decision to acquit them of trespassing for displaying anti-abortion signs and distributing leaflets at Calgary International Airport is another positive ruling for freedom of expression. “It’s encouraging for free expression rights generally,” John Carpay said outside court on Monday, following provincial court Judge Allan Fradsham’s decision.

As abortion continues to be a divisive issue within the federal Tory government, a group seeking to end the practice in Canada is taking aim at Prime Minister Stephen Harper and fellow Calgary Conservative MP Michelle Rempel. The Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform is distributing thousands of explicit postcards in Harper’s Calgary Southwest and Rempel’s Calgary Centre-North ridings that feature pictures of aborted fetuses next to the politicians’ faces.

Hester has a problem that a lot of young people have: she wants to live her own life on her own terms, not her family’s. When she crosses a certain line, the family simply shuts her out — until a twist arises, and she’s forced to decide between getting even and forgiving them their trespasses, so to speak.

There’s been much ado these past few days about the 50th anniversary of the late Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, and women’s progress toward equality in the intervening half-century. Let’s hope in the next 50 years, we see the abandonment of feminist groupthink and acceptance of the truth that you can be a feminist without subscribing to the views that other women think they have the right to dictate that you must hold. Now that would be real progress.

Albertans’ attitudes about divisive social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and doctor-assisted suicide continue to shift, with most provincial residents now “more progressive than traditional in their thinking,” says a new poll. According to a Lethbridge College telephone survey of more than 1,000 adults this September, Albertans have a “progressive” attitude on a number of social questions.

Wildrose party leader Danielle Smith says that despite Alberta PC party attempts to "fearmonger" her stance on such contentious social issues as conscience rights and abortion services in the April 23 provincial election, she's being perfectly clear.

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